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noyd666
i guess your talking farenheit?
Stretching Seedlings. Pictures help please
- Thread starter Sinisterzane
- Start date
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noyd666
26 degrees farenheit is only 3.333c, better start knitting jumpers. fukkkkkn cold.Sinisterzane
Member
I dont think they will be feeling very groovy if they were are 3 degrees centigrade
Sinisterzane
Member
Day 23 pics...looks like they are finally getting down to business when comparing with day 21 pics
Notice the light green stripes on this one?....its the only one thats like it
Notice the light green stripes on this one?....its the only one thats like it
Sinisterzane
Member
I looked through your whole thread here man, and i had some of the same problems as you just recently. I have trouble keeping my grow warm, and the medium the plants are in , as well as my water. Imho i would back off on the water big time. I worked at a very large scale hydroponic tomato farm that used nft for the plants.The building was 15 acres with a glass roof, with the biggest tomato plants you'll ever see. They watered for multiple intervals during the day, but for only 5 mins max at a time, and that's only cause they were huge plants. The root temp zone along with too much water is your problem, as it was mine. I would suggest some heat mats directly under your table, or even water proof ones directly under the rockwool slabs. I wouldn't water them again until i saw new growth and the rockwool was almost dry. They will grow in the temps you described, but very slow compared to if your high was 29 and low was 21, this is from personal experience from the last two weeks. I use a propane heater to simulate daytime temps in early/late spring for my mothers/clones, and an awesome benefit is co2 as a by-product. Oh and if anyone's wondering check out Intergrow Ltd. on google to see large scale nft at it's finest.
Sinisterzane
Member
The water and temps you describe make perfect sense to me....
I currently have them being watered for 30mins twice a day 12 hours apart..the 3" cubes allways seem to wet but changing it to 30mins once every 24 hours might be to low?
The temps are allways at 26 it was just the problem last night with the heater breaking
I have a fish tank heater set to 20 degrees in each NFT table and the water is at a constant 20 degrees..the air is 26 degrees at lights on and when I rig up these new heaters I reckon I can get it to around 20 degrees at lights off...
18 years ago when i did my first grow I had a propane heater in a loft with 8 plants of which were a clay pebble and perlite mix...I used to lift the pot up and dunk it in a buckets of nutes once a day....didnt even have an EC meter or a PH pen as was using the vial and paper colour check chart method
The results were amazing!....it was the propane that did it...it was so hot in there I couldnt stay in there for more than 10 minutes at a time must of been well into the 30s at lights on
Glad it all made sense, and for a little comparison, i flood six times a day for only one min. It was hard for me to understand that too much water is not good. The palnts need o2 as well when in a medium, dwc is a different story. And once the roots get developed they will be very efficent at holding the water they need in the rockwool, and using as is, until they are a litttle dry and need water.Think of the slabs as giant wicks for the roots.
Sinisterzane
Member
Put a little camera in there today (£70.00) and 2 x 3' tubular heaters on top of each other set to 20 degrees on a remote stat...waiting for lights off to see how they perform
The camera is a wireless one and goes to me mates pc downstairs so he can check lights are going on and off when they are supposed to, hear the noise of the dripping of the NFT pumps, make out if the leaves drop etc and we put a thermometer in there so can see the current temp (26 degrees C in the pic)
going to wait till 8:00 pm and get him to text me every hour with the temp to see how well the tubular heaters are holding up before lights on again at midnight
The camera is a wireless one and goes to me mates pc downstairs so he can check lights are going on and off when they are supposed to, hear the noise of the dripping of the NFT pumps, make out if the leaves drop etc and we put a thermometer in there so can see the current temp (26 degrees C in the pic)
going to wait till 8:00 pm and get him to text me every hour with the temp to see how well the tubular heaters are holding up before lights on again at midnight
Sinisterzane
Member
I currently have the NFT pumps coming on at midnight and midday for 30mins...I peeled the cover back and looked in there about 5:00pm and the cubes are completely soaked! Do you think I should try 30mins once per day? If the lights come on at midnight and then off at 8pm - midnight 20/4 what would you say is the best time to give them there feed?...as the lights come on at midnight?
I wouldn't feed them again until they dry out a little. Then i would water once or twice a day, prefferably an hour or so after the lights come on. Does your sytem flood from underneath and completly saturate your rockwell? 30 mins of flooding seems to be excessive to me, Try five mins or less, that is until they get bigger, and use more, they may never though. I had an ebb and flow table that was 4'x8' and had it packed full of three inch cubes. I flooded for six mins, six times a day, with a 400 something gallon per hour pump. This was plenty and i prolly could have went every six hours instead. I had two 1000 hps above the table, and the cubes never went comepletly dry.
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noyd666
I dont think they will be feeling very groovy if they were are 3 degrees centigrade
might stop drinking.Sinisterzane
Member
The NFT's are GT901's (2.1m long by 420mm wide) these have a bottom reservoir tank with a small pump (450 L/H) in of which pumps the water into the top tray of which has a spreader matt..the water goes in one end and flows down the top tray of which have the 3" cubes on...the whole thing is at a slight angle so the water drains down and into the bottom reservoir tank..so basically the whole cubes dont get submerged only the very bottoms of the cubes.
As I see it I think it would be safer to have the pump on for quite a while but lower the amount it comes on daily (possibly to once) the reason being is if the pump comes on for say 5 minutes the cubes at the start could suck most of the water up and not allow the ones near the end to get any so it might be a bit hit and miss...flood them for longer and they will all definitely get enough.
As of tomorrow I will start monitoring how wet the cubes are then possibly change it from 30mins twice a day to 30mins one a day an hour after the lights come on...
ok now i see , sounds like a plan.
Like I said before...Give em once a day, keep an eye on them through the day, and give them more if they need it. I wouldn't even use 30 minutes if it is a normal timer with 15 minute segments. The cube will only hold so much water. Maybe consider getting a timer with shorter times.....I use one of these.
http://www.progrow.co.uk/acatalog/info_2653.html.
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noyd666
like e said .
Sinisterzane
Member
Im a bit concerned about the roots that are out of the cubes and sitting on the tray/spreader matt....the tray and spreader matt would dry out within 24 hours?
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noyd666
can you baby them a long a bit, hand water lightly.
The spreader mat holds a little water in it, as you get more roots reaching out over the mat, you increase the frequency of the pump running. More short waterings are better than 1 or 2 big soakings.
Even a digital timer would be better than 30 minutes at the moment mate, and I really don't like digital timers.
If I was doing it I'd have a minute timer and I'd start em on 1 minute every 4 hours(in the lit period of a 20/4 cycle) and go from there increasing the on minutes and decreasing the off time, those ecotechnics cycle timers are ideal for this. You need to keep an eye on the roots during this time.
This is why it is always better to wait until your cube is completely covered in roots before you put em in the system..
Sinisterzane
Member
Should I of removed the plastic wraps from the 3" cubes before putting them in the NFt's? Just been doing a search and some people are saying to leave them on completely, some are saying to pull them up about 10mm and some are saying to take them off?
